We reviewed a number of nettops over the year, including several Sapphire Edge systems based on Atom, Brazos and Celeron chips. Although we love the idea of tiny, power efficient boxes for the living room or small office, none of them are a great choice for true enthusiasts as they simply don’t offer enough performance. Being an enthusiast oriented brand, Sapphire knows this as well, so it came up with something a bit beefier in the same form factor.

The Edge VS series is based on AMD Trinity chips, a far cry from underpowered and cheap Brazos rigs. It comes in two flavours. The Edge VS4 features a dual-core APU, while the VS8 packs AMD’s low voltage A8-A4555M 1.6GHz quad-core, with a very potent Radeon HD 7600G GPU. Atom and Brazos systems are simply not in the same league.

Since the VS series features much more powerful hardware and a plethora of additional connectors at the back, it is somewhat bigger than Edge HD systems, but it is still a very compact system. The design is a lot more aggressive, a clear indication that there’s something special under the bonnet. It looks quite a bit meaner than the Edge HD, although some people might prefer the HD’s sleek and simple styling.

Pervasive computing has taken over as the dominant technology market for consumers. Even the US government is using tablets and smartphones, and when that slow-moving behemoth is on board, you know the ship has set sail. Supporting that Always On Real Time Access experience with back-end infrastructure is the other major driver in the universe of computers. Everything else is on the wane, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Users who want to stay productive, or merely connected while away from their desk, have found the smartphone to be a mobile workhorse. Today, Benchmark Reviews brings you a hands-on review of Motorola's latest flagship device, the DROID RAZR MAXX HD.

Motorola's 4.7 inch HD Super AMOLED screen is a very nice upgrade from the 4.3" version on my old RAZR, and now features 720p resolution (1280x720). While nobody can currently improve on the IPS+ LCD screen featured on the LG Optimus G, or the monster screen on the oversized Samsung Galaxy Note II, the RAZR HD sits solidly atop the second tier in both screen size and quality. Both the RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD have a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1 GB of RAM, and the 4.7&#8243; HD Super AMOLED display. They also have the same cameras, an 8MP rear unit and a 1.3MP facing the user.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted a look at ASUS’ VivoBook X202E, a modest notebook that came just shy of earning itself “Ultrabook” status. Despite its lacking performance, we ended up loving everything else about the notebook, so we had great interest in seeing what ASUS could pull off with something a bit larger.

That’s where the S56C comes in. It is an Ultrabook, and a rather large one, too. It comes in at 15.6-inches, and packs in an SSD for caching, a 750GB hard drive, a beefier processor (with Turbo), is equipped with an ODD, and offers Gigabit Ethernet – something the X202E oddly didn’t.

PC speakers are now expected to be much more flexible in terms of sound reproduction as it is not just a video gaming system anymore, but a full-fledged multimedia unit that can readily stream high-definition movies and access terabytes of digital music collection. We expect high-definition videos to be rendered with clarity and precision on our displays so why shouldn’t we demand the same for our auditory needs? Ineo, known primarily for their storage solutions has been developing audio solutions under their Alienvibes brand that are designed to address the multimedia demands of the modern PC user.

The Ineo Alienvibes W401 is a 2.2 channel speaker system set for PC use. The W401 speaker’s cabinet is wooden, housing a pair of 4” drivers for the subwoofer and a pair of 3” drivers with 1” tweeters for the satellites. With the subwoofer measuring 280 x 228 x 220mm (WxHxD) and the pair of satellites measuring 110 x 246 x 132mm each, the Ineo Alienvibes W401 is larger than most typical PC speakers. The Alienvibes W401 has a frequency response range of 35 Hz to 20 kHz with a total peak power of 110W. Volume, Bass and Treble controls are built into the subwoofer cabinet of the W401 with a power LED ring indicator around the volume knob.

Comparing to a stock box cooling solution may seem less than ideal, but Corsair's H90 does well against more capable cooling solutions. When overclocked it delivered a three degree improvement over one of the best air cooling solution out right now from Phanteks. Any which way you look at it, the performance speaks for itself. Chassis compatibility runs the gamut, but suffice to say the H90 is going to require a chassis that accommodate a 140mm fan in either the exhaust or input fan locations. If you are adventurous you can even mod your chassis to fit one in.

Razer is well known from its abnormally shaped gaming gear, which tend to have some very interesting features. Razer's newest gaming mouse, Ouroboros, is a wireless mouse with customizable ambidextrous ergonomics and excellent adjustment possibilities. Let's see if the newcomer is as good as Razer claims!

Deepcool's IceBlade Pro V2.0 heatsink stands 161mm tall and weighs a solid 981 grams. At the heart of this boxy heatsink are four 8mm diameter copper heatpipes, nickel plated along with everything else, including the aluminum fins. The heatpipes are exposed at the base to make direct contact with the processor and ideally, reduce thermal joint resistance.

The PC gaming industry is changing. NVIDIA’s Project Shield and the upcoming Steambox and Steam’s Big Picture Mode are indications that PC gamers want to move into the living room. At CES we saw many different compact gaming systems from the likes of Alienware, Digital Storm and iBUYPOWER. Today we are getting our hands on one. iBUYPOWER’s Revolt is the newest compact gaming system in which iBUYPOWER is using their own custom designed compact case, and their own motherboard. This is something new as we mainly know iBUYPOWER for using other companies hardware in their custom systems. This system is small enough to fit in your home theater, can easily be taken to LAN parties and did I mention it looks awesome? Inside you will find a watercooled Z77 system, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 and 8GB of DDR3.

Technology marches to the beat of its own drum and the hard part is keeping in step with the rhythm. You may recall, for example, that we already reviewed Dell's XPS 13 Ultrabook a year ago, singing high praise for its edge-to-edge display, stellar battery life, and overall performance, which at the time was the best we'd seen from an Ultrabook. If we were to compare it with today's crop of Ultrabooks, however, we'd have to sing a different tune now that Ivy Bridge is pervasive in the market. Or would we? Dell went back and re-wrote the lyrics without changing the name of the song, which is our way of saying the XPS 13 Ultrabook we have for review is a refreshed model.

The biggest upgrade comes in the form of a much improved display. Dell's XPS 13 is now configurable with a Full HD 1080p display that not only offers a higher resolution than yesteryear's 1366x768 res, but it's also brighter (350-nit brightness) and boasts superior viewing angles (up to 178 degrees). It's just a higher quality panel all-around versus the 2012 model.

When we last took a look at a gaming mouse from Swedish company Mionix, their Naos 3200 turned out to be an excellent value product that offered gamers a robust mouse in what was the most comfortable ergonomic design I’ve ever laid hands on. Tackling the industry heavyweights is no small task in the mouse market, especially for a company as relatively new as Mionix.

Then we heard rumblings of a newer version of the Naos, a flagship version set to promise gamers a more advanced laser engine. With other manufacturers pushing the envelope, the Naos 3200 seemed pale in comparison, at least in terms of high DPI sensitivity. The race for big DPI was on. In response, Mionix now has the Naos 8200, a refresh of a winning formula that captures the same outstanding ergonomics while jumping to the top of the heap with that coveted high sensitivity bragging rights.

The ACER Aspire S7-191-6640 has been one of my better experiences with an ultrabook. Over the past few months I've had my hands on the Cyberpower Zeus M2, and the Dell XPS14. Each of those had their own strong points and their own week points. The ACER Aspire s7-191-6640 really didn't seem to have much in the way any weak points, at least not in my experience. Of course there could always be more performance from the processor, but hey, that's pretty much true of any system out there...

The cooling fan isn’t the most exciting thing to review, surely I’d rather be reviewing a video card or maybe a game, but the cooling fan is something that is truly needed in your system as without it you will no doubt run into problems! When it comes to fans, I think Noctua is probably the leading company out there as they are one that puts everything into design and innovation of their cooling products. Today for review I have one of their latest fans, the model NF-A15 PWM, which is a 150mm fan, but it actually has mounts for 140mm sizes. The special design of the NF-A15 allows you to mount a 150mm fan wherever you can install a 140mm fan giving you full 150mm airflow performance but in a smaller sized area. Read on to learn more about a great fan… -

If you haven't done so already, make sure you read our evaluation of the Corsair H90 and H110 Hydro liquid CPU coolers today. If you are stepping up to a closed loop all-in-one cooling solution, you'll definitely want to read this review.

Corsair, once known only for quality enthusiast RAM modules, has successfully diversified its products reaching into cases, power supplies, processor cooling solutions. With the release of the H90 and H110 Hydro Series, we see the first new refresh in its closed loop liquid cooling systems.

The Vector is one of the latest products from OCZ, sports an in-house Indilinx Barefoot 3 NAND controller and has succeeded to surpass most of the SSDs we have tested so far. The Vector is available in 128GB, 256 and 512GB capacities and is also bundled with Acronis disk cloning software, which is very useful when transferring data from one drive to another.

Noctua is well-known for providing some of the biggest and most efficient air-coolers among enthusiasts and overclockers. Their latest cooler, the NH-L9 series, is designed to meet the demand for the growing market of the small form factor PC with its extreme small foot-print and low 37mm height. Today, we have both the NH-L9i (for Intel) and the NH-L9a (for AMD) here today.